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The headscrarf thing in france was really centered around tye wearing of hijabs (burkas). Some children (IIRC) were coming to school wearing the full head-to-toe face-covering traditional islamic dress. Schools were concerend that children werent wearing uniform (suprisingly important in terms of insurance apparently), but more importantly they were declaring themselves more 'islamic' than their headscarf wearing brethren.

The schools found it hard to legislate against the hijabs - there were various appeals based on human rights/freedom of expression/discrimination which only served to highlight the issue and put more presure on other islamic families to adopt the dress-code - so they reinforced the traditional secular rules, hence the ban on ostensibly religious clothing in schools.

I dont think he meant launch-pads in the traditional sense of the word. Hes obviously refering to launch points (points of departure) - but since he's addressing the general public (who arent as savvy as us) theyll understand the concept of a launch pad better - as well as it envoking the more romantic mental image of a rocket launch.

Iran prescribes to a different form of Islam and are unlikely to shed a tear for the decline of wahabism.

I feel it should be pointed out that Iran and Iraq are very different situations (aside from iran having WMDs  :;): ). Iran has elections, a democracy of sorts, and by many accounts the theocratic government is barely holding onto power ( unfortunately the invasion of iraq and the ensuing anti-american wave of resentment has played well into the hard-liners hands). There is actually a pro-reform opposition party, student protests, and at last count roughly 15'000 political blogs from disaffected citizens - all of these things were not  possible - let alone present - in iraq.

Now, if bush starts gearing up to invade Iran he's going to need to start spitting out the usual 'the war against terrorism' (T.W.A.T) retoric - ironically in many ways easier because of the actual potential development of WMDs. However unlike Iraq there arent that many political exiles, the 'opposition' as it were is already in iran engaged in bringing about change through their own democratic political process are quite likely,frankly, to tell bush to f*ck off if he tries to either ally himself with their cause (the touch of death) or muster support from another coalition fro more 'regime change'.

Question is - how can old bushy invade when the people he is trying to save are telling him to stuff his own mission accomplished banner up his arse and to let them get on with it themselves?

Which is why he dressed up in a flight suit and unfurled a massive banner which read "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" on the deck of an aircraft carrier.  ???

But we were already fighting the terrorists on the closest thing they had to a 'home turf'. Thats what Afghanistan was all about. We didnt need a 'new front', we already had a front where we were fighting them. :bars2:

If your ultimate aim is to invade the entire middle east then Iran is just as 'invadeable' from afghanistan as Iraq - if not more so. Invading Iran first would make more sense beacause

a - there are less fronts and borders involved.
b - sadham (irans only significant neighbour) would have been highly unlikely to do anything to help Iran during the invasion. (being secular and a sunni he has little or no incentive, common ground or recourse to significantly affect or help irans population or theocratic leadership)
c - sadham would have been ill placed to do anything to hinder the occupation once invasion was complete (see above) unlike iran affecting iraqs shiite population the other way round.

Iraq could then be invaded, continuing the theme of minimising border issues and obvious lack of iranian interference - continue on to syria and egypt at your leisure/if you are so inclined etc.

Establishing democracy in the middle east is also a non-starter as democracy is (was) close to break-out in iran at the moment anyway. Helping democracy in iran which has a history of democracy, wants democracy and in which the population are interested in politics/student uprisings (its all the same to me  ) and which has a homogeneos shiite poulation is far more likely to lead to a break-out of democracy in the rest of the middle east (starting with iraq due to its restless shiite majority) than the other way round. Invading Iraq has strengthened the hand of the religous hard-liners and if anything made democracy less likely and increased the necessity for possible invasion.

Gotta run now - but you get my point  ???

Imagine that. A small satellie in mars 'geo'-stationary orbit with a live feed of mars - the whole planet, not just a segment of the surface.

Imagine watching dust storms slowly engulf the planet - now that is the way to inspire people!

Theres a whole 'nother planet out there!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3670018.stm]Iran has reacted defiantly to calls from the UN nuclear watchdog to suspend all enrichment activities and said it would not agree to halt them.

Its good thing we invaded Iraq because it definately cowed Iran. They'll definately behave now and theres no way our overly aggressive moves played into the hands of the hardline conservatives such that supporting increased democracy is tantamount to supporting America. And since we invaded Iraq theyll definately not produce nuclear weapons - its not as if we've done anything to make them think they might need them or anything <cough> North Korea <cough>

BTW i think Iran is our best hope for democracy in the middle east - a significant proportion of their population are familiar with the idea <cough> unlike Iraq <cough> and more importatly want it. You'd have though if we were really interested in democracy in the middle east we'd have done something to help them, not hinder them.

True.

For most internet browsing people tend to stick to certain websites. My PDA automatically downloads my favourite websites so i can browse them at my leisure whilst i travel in the mornings etc. It wouldnt be hard for the astronauts to have a list of favourite websites that automatically update for them to browse. (Even message boards could be effectively used.) The twenty minute-or-so delay would be unnoticeble for most things - except the odd google search obviously 

(Even message boards could be effectively used.)

Or you could implement democracy in its truest form - the way the greeks (athens) did it. All officials and jury-men are elected by lot - obvioulsy you wouldnt have a president but a council. It encourages the development of a well educated populace for one thing.

Another interesting thing that they had - which i quite like - was ostracism - from the Greek word for potsherd. In this reverse election to decide which leading politician should be exiled for ten years, voters scratched or painted the name of their preferred candidate on a piece of broken pottery. At least 6000 citizens (which was a lot for back then) had to 'vote' for an ostracism to be valid, and all the biggest political fish risked being fried in this ceremonious way. For almost a hundred years ostracism fulfilled its function of aborting serious civil unrest or even civil war.

Just had a though from rqding someones post above. How hard would it be to ban ammunition? How easy is it to make ammunition really? That would be no where near as simple as making a weapon and would likely be a far more time consuming effort probably involving hard to find/illegal materials.

N.B Guns to a lot of people are stutus symbols. How likely is your average street 'gangsta' to walk round with a gun improvised from a piece of plumbing? It would hardly make for a credibility inducing sight. Strikes me you could go a long way to reducing black-on-black / gang crime if their 'pieces' were less shiny and impressive looking.

Again Cobra, we're arguing two different things. The points you make are valid and i can recognise the idea. You're arguing results and im arguing method.

If your administration cannot even muster the courage to publicly admit its intentions, if it doesnt feel confident enough to even win an argument about what it plans to do, then maybe, just maybe, the administration or the plan needs changing? A wave of anti-american feeling would likely play into the Bush administrations hands anyway.

There will also be issues with Syria and Iran because both sport 'democratically' elected governments. There are no real bad guys for Bush to beat his chest and point at.

If you truly think that then you have to admit that out both our respective governments lied to us before the war. There is no avoiding that conclusion.

Im not discrediting the idea of removing sadham, or establishing a democratic beachhead in the middleeast (both ideas merit discussion and the latter also represents a sound long term approach) - but thats not what our governments said at the time.

If that was the reason (and once again im not saying it wasnt) then there was plenty of time to build a true coalition instead of splitting the UN and NATO and the particiapnts in the 'war on terror' down the middle, there was no imminent threat and no reason to 'rush in'.

If that was the reason then Bush lied to you to the tune of over 100 billion dollars and the only apology hes given you is his characteristic smirk.

What im saying Cobra is that we can argue ourselves blue about motivations and whether the war was on balance the right or wrong thing to do in terms of results, present and future. But the build-up, execution, aftermath and lessons learnt have been an unmitigated disaster. The coalition/alliance in the war on terror is split with the extremes on both sides unable to trust the motivations behind actions of those on on the other, and the extremists in the middle east have more reasons to hate us than ever before, and have more recruits than they know what to do with.

Thats why the France-US spat was so stupid. (Just because they didnt agree with Bush when he tried to rush the whole Iraq invasion through the UN) After all the America-bashing and the renaming of french-fries to freedom-fries and whining about how you were abandonned after all you did for them in WW2, at the end of the day you have to f**cking grow up and look each other in the eye and remeber that you're allies in the war on terror. That kind of damage is going to take years to repair, years we simply cant afford.

France and America have traditionally been closer than the UK-US special relationship. Where do you think you got the statue of liberty from! Is that going to be renamed too? They were the people who saved you in your own war of independence for christ sakes!

I seem to remember reading somewhere that there simply arent the resources available for the 1.4 billion chinese citizens to reach a standard of living on par with america.

Just looking at oil, the world produces roughly 75 million barrels a day, and there really isnt much room for an increase. America consumes 20 million barrels a day, if china was to consume a per capita equivalent theyd need 100 million barrels a day and of course theyd want the associated 700 million cars/SUVs.

The USA has set the bar too high, in order for China to surpass the USA theres gonna need to be some messy wars at the very least.